American Studies/AP US History Summer Reading Guide

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Howard Stevens
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1 1 American Studies/AP US History Summer Reading Guide The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum (Signet Classics Edition) (ISBN ) AND Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger (Norton Critical Edition) (ISBN ) AND The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson Introduction: Three important quotations and commentary. Please read this first. There was never, for me as teacher and writer, an obsession with objectivity, which I consider neither possible nor desirable. I understood early that what is presented as history or news is inevitably a selection out of an infinite amount of information, and that what is selected depends on what the selector thinks is important. Those who talk from high perches about the sanctity of facts are parroting Charles Dickens stiff-backed pendant in Hard Times, Mr. Gradgrind, who insisted his students give him facts, facts, nothing but facts. But behind any presented fact is a judgment the judgment that this fact is important to put forward (and, by implication, other facts may be ignored). Any such judgment reflects the beliefs, the values of the historian, however he or she pretends to objectivity. (Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader, 16) History, is changing all the time. When I attended high school in the late 1970s, there was little mention of the South, slavery, sharecropping or racial relations in any of the history books I was assigned to read (and I went to high school in south Georgia!). Of course, slavery was briefly mentioned in the unit leading up to The War Between the States, and there was a chapter that mentioned something about the Civil Rights Movement (of course, we never got that far), but the South and these related topics were treated as outside of the theme of all of the history textbooks: the rise to greatness of the American nation. When I got to college in the 1980s, I begin to read a lot of history. I discovered, free of the constraints imposed by the State of Georgia s required curriculum, that the South wasn t thought of in a very favorable manner by much of the rest of the country. At best, the South was an embarrassment, a deviation from the supposed progress that characterized the history of the United States. At worst, the South was a place of downright evil, the dark underworld to the North s goodness and virtue. But, being a Southerner, I didn t want to be an embarrassment or evil, yet I knew that what I was taught in high school wasn t the truth either. Although I wasn t a history major, I decided to take a few history courses and see if I could discover a way out of this dilemma. A class with an excellent history teacher and an encounter with a book called

2 2 The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Van Woodward provided me with the realization that Dr. Zinn articulates in the quotation above: neither what I was taught in high school nor what I read in college was truth; they were all selective recreations of the past. Although all of the histories I had been exposed to were based on facts, the facts were not the most important factor in any of the histories. The selection and interpretation of facts is what history is all about. This selection and interpretation is based on a historian s judgment as to what is relevant and what is not. Tell it like it was, runs a common American phrase, echoing, no doubt unconsciously, Leopold von Ranke s famous injunction to write history wie es eigentlich gewesen how it really was. But this is neither as simple nor as easy as it sounds. What happened, what we recall, what we recover, what we relate, are often sadly different, and the answers to our questions may be difficult to seek and painful to find. The temptation is often overwhelmingly strong to tell it, not as it really was, but as we would wish it to have been. (Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented, 71) As the summer reading books make clear, it is simply impossible to know how it really was. The truth about the movement of populations across the continent most certainly differed according to who was moving, when they were moving, and where they moved. Additionally, our ability to know this truth is limited by the evidence that we have generally oral legends, written records, and archeological reconstructions. Memories are unreliable, recoverable data is always incomplete, and events that are painful are often repressed. This can also be seen in the tale of the Columbian Exposition of Chicago, in the Gilded Age, was a confusing mess of a city. No one was objectively observing the city s development and writing down what was happening. The was no omnipresent force capable of seeing the big picture being created out of the interactions between the millions of lives that spent time in that city. For these reasons (and others) a serial killer could operate largely in the open for two years. The book you are to read about this is the recreation of a historian in the 21 st century. Where there was no documentation (and serial killers seldom keep accurate records or journals), the historian imagines what must have happened or what was going on in the minds of the people involved based upon the best evidence and theories he can access. The histories I read in high school as well as those in college were selected or written too often to tell the past as we wish it to have been. In high school, the history curriculum simply decided to not select painful and embarrassing events from the South s history or the story of a serial killer (or for some reason the 1893 Columbian Exposition). This curriculum imagined a world where all events contribute to the march of positive progress. In college, the books I read had to explain the crimes committed against the Civil Rights Movement and so made the South an aberration, thereby excusing the rest of the United States from complicity. In other words, they imagined a story of good versus evil, and someone had to be evil. But even if this Manichean tale has validity, it is only one of many possible tales that could be told about the same events. Or as Erik Larson says about his book, I

3 3 present only one possibility, though I recognize that any number of other motives might well be posited. Historians are in the business of reconstruction. if historians are builders, they must decide at the outset on the scale of their projects. How much ground should be covered? A year? Fifty years? Several centuries? How will the subject manner be defined or limited? (.) The lure of topics both broad and significant is undeniable The great equalizer of such grand plans is the twenty-four hour day. Historians have only a limited amount of time, and the hours, they sadly discover, are not expandable. Obviously, the more years that are covered, the less time there is available to research the events in each one. Conversely, the narrower the area of research, the more it is possible to become immersed in the details of a period. Relationships and connections can be explored that would have gone unnoticed without the benefit of a microscopic focus. Of course, small-scale history continuously runs the risk of becoming obscure and pedantic. But a keen mind working on a small area will yield results whose implications go beyond the subject matter s original boundaries. By understanding what has taken place on a small patch of ground, the historian can begin to see more clearly the structure and dynamics of the larger world around it. (James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, 22) The summer reading selections deal with a broad and significant topic, the shift from a largely rural to a largely urban country in the late 19 th century and people s reactions to this shift, but they are very different in how they approach this topic. Essentially they are all tales of young people going to the city: a fictional girl (Dorothy) going to a fictional city (Oz), a fictional boy (Dick) going to a real city (New York) and real people going to a real city (Devil in White City). I think each book -- two are novels written for children during the period being considered and the other is a popular history written for adults and published only a few years ago -- contains truths about this important event (the rural to urban transformation) and people s reactions to it. By focusing on these events, we can uncover a great deal of knowledge about the demographic transition, and political, economic and social changes occurring in the United States during the late 19 th century. By focusing on small patch(es) of ground, I believe that these books reveal the structure and dynamics of the larger world in a way that is more immediate and vivid than any general survey of United States history could.

4 4 Guides to the Books--Instructions I suggest that you read the books in the order that I list them, which is the order in which they were published and roughly, the order in which they take place historically. I begin by asking you to do some background research, which you can accomplish by using the internet. I would suggest identifying these terms before you read the books. Identification. The following all play an important role in the books. You should write a brief explanation of what each is. Look each up on the internet before reading the books. After you have read the books, briefly explain how each term relates to the stories told in the books. Social Darwinism Eugenics Jane Addams and the Hull House Frederick Law Olmstead Francis Willard and the WCTU Samuel Gompers and the A.F. of L. Farming the Great Plains in the late 19 th century The Populist Movement of the 1890s Panic of 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner Pullman Strike of 1894 William Jennings Bryan and the Election of 1896 Buffalo Bill Cody and the Wild West Show Ragged Dick (At this point, you only have to read the actual novel. It is on pages in the Norton Critical Edition.) 1. Consider the following quotations by 20 th century literary critics. Only fools laugh at Horatio Alger, and his poor boys who make good. The wiser man who thinks twice about that sterling author will realize that Alger is to Americans what Homer was to the Greeks. (Nathaneal West and Boris Ingster, 1940) Anyone who wants to know his country should get acquainted with Horatio Alger. It is dangerous to ignore a man whose ideas hang on so stubbornly. (Rychard Fink, 1962) Each of the above quotes tell us that Alger is important to understanding something essential about America, but they don t tell us what that is. Like Homer s epics, Alger s books have been interpreted to have very different meanings over the years since they were published. Although written for young teen boys in 1868, Ragged Dick, is now mostly read by adult scholars. Each of the following is an interpretation of Ragged Dick that was accepted as valid by scholars at some period since the book

5 5 was published. For each, type about a half-page defense. That is, use evidence from the book to defend each interpretation. There is no right or wrong answer as these are interpretations. Do your best. (a) Ragged Dick is the tale of a moral hero, who because of his solid moral nature, becomes moderately successful. (b) Ragged Dick is the tale of a resourceful and successful hero who is modestly moral. (c) Ragged Dick is essentially a humanitarian story that urges concern for the poor and social reform. (d) Ragged Dick is a piece of political propaganda celebrating the merits of free enterprise and the wisdom of the wealthy elite. (e) Ragged Dick is essentially the forerunner of that uniquely American obsession, the self-help guide. 2. How realistic do you think the character Ragged Dick is? How realistic do you think Alger s portrayal of New York City in the late 1860s is? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Discussion Questions: Each of the following should be answered as a short essay. The answers should be typed and about one-half page in length. 1. How is Dorothy s life in Kansas and her family portrayed in the novel? Based on your research into farming on the Great Plains, how realistic is this portrayal? 2. Compare and contrast Dorothy with Ragged Dick. Explain four ways in which they are similar and four ways in which they are different. (That one is a girl and one a boy, doesn t count unless you can think of a reason that it matters besides the gender difference.) 3. Think about the various fantastic lands that Dorothy visits. What do the descriptions of these lands say about the tastes and values of Americans during the late 19 th century? 4. Many people think that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is meant to be a parody or satire. If this is true, what is it parodying or satirizing? 5. Ragged Dick embraces success and the American Dream but Dorothy rejects it. Support or refute the above quotation.

6 6 The Devil in the White City Discussion Questions: Each of the following should be answered as a short essay. The answers should be typed and about one-half page in length. 1. The large-scale migration of young, single women to urban areas that occurred in the late 19 th and early 20 th century is a major theme in The Devil in the White City. What factors motivated these women to move? What made them so susceptible to the nefarious intent of someone like Dr. H.H. Holmes? 2. As described in The Devil in the White City, explain the major problems of urban life in American cities such as Chicago in the 1890s. How and why were these cities changing? 3. As The Devil in the White City notes, the Columbian Expedition of 1893 was the major story dominating U.S. headlines for over a year. Francis J. Bellemy wrote The Pledge of Allegiance for students to recite on the dedication of the fair. Why was the success of this fair deemed so important to the United States and especially the city of Chicago? 4. What factors enabled Dr. H.H. Holmes to get away with his crimes for as long as he did?

Advanced Placement United States History Summer Reading Guide

1 Advanced Placement United States History 2010-2011 Summer Reading Guide Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger (Norton Critical Edition) (ISBN 0393925897) AND The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness